LOWER PROVIDENCE — When Dave Girard retired from “Ma Bell” after 35 years he was confident that the company’s promises of boosting his pension benefits would materialize over time.

That confidence was initially tested when the expected cost of living adjustments didn’t happen following his retirement as director of financial services in 1989.

Five years earlier, the Bell System empire, piloted by the American Bell Telephone Company and then by AT&T, splintered into several independent companies, including Bell Atlantic, NYNEX, GTE, IDEARC (now Supermedia) and MCI.

NYNEX merged with Bell Atlantic in 1999, ultimately becoming Verizon.

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“I represented Bell Atlantic and all the companies that belonged to Bell Atlantic,” said Girard, who lives in Audubon. “I remember the day when my boss’ secretary called me and said the Bell System was broken up. There are certain things you always remember, like when John Kennedy was assassinated. And that was one for me.”

As Girard, a Pittsburgh native who went to work for Bell Telephone in 1954, was waiting for his pension adjustments, a couple of fellow Bell retirees were putting their frustrations with their former employer to work by founding the Association of BellTel Retirees.

The group, based in Cold Spring Harbor, and initially made up of founders Bill Jones and Bob Rehm and a handful of others, now has 128,000 members — 7,300 of them in Pennsylvania.

The group’s mission statement on Facebook noted that it is “dedicated to the protection and enhancement of the pensions and benefits for all retirees and beneficiaries of the companies and subsidiaries that make up the Verizon and IDEARC Corporations.”

“I joined the Association because I was impressed with how it was keeping retirees better informed than the company was,” Girard said. “The Association has gotten involved in keeping track of what the company is doing, not only how it is doing in terms of profitability but how it’s treating employees .. . and it does a good job of communicating with retirees. Times clearly had changed. Managements of companies have changed and the idea of someone looking out for retirees was very appealing to me. You see all the times that companies are doing things that employees and retirees don’t like, and I’ve been impressed with the way the Association has handled things for us. It’s important,” Girard added, “that no one thinks these things were meant as gifts from the company. These were things we earned and were promised.”

Girard mused that too often, as big companies focus on profits they lose touch with some of the folks who helped swell their good fortunes.

“I think sometimes big companies like Verizon are certainly very concerned about their shareholders, their customers and employees, but I’m not so sure that retirees get the best representation. This is where BellTel steps in and does a good job. It’s such a great communications vehicle. The company used to put out newsletters that weren’t nearly as comprehensive as what the Association does. The Association has been able to get many issues on the proxy statement for Verizon’s annual meeting,” Girard allowed.

The Association’s most recent such victory came last month when a proxy campaign urged the shareholders of one of the country’s largest publicly traded companies to vote for limits to extravagant executive bonuses.

As its proxy statement details, Verizon subsequently agreed to reduce payouts of performance-based stock that its senior executives can earn for below-average stock returns.

Previous successful campaigns resulted in a partial adoption of a proxy that limits the number of boards a Verizon director can serve on.

“Retirees of Verizon have a significant vested interest in Verizon and we want to see it do well,” Jones said. “The fact is, 90 percent of the Association of BellTel Retirees’ members are Verizon customers and 72 percent are shareholders. Many of us supported the company via stock purchases in our working years and have long had grave concerns about management excesses,” he added. “The BellTel Retirees have demonstrated over and over again that a group of small but very engaged shareholders can reshape the compensation and governance policies of a corporate giant in a manner that benefits all company owners.

Shareholder activism has been on the rise for some time, Girard pointed out.

“It’s not a unique thing in the U.S. that shareholders are taking a more active role on boards than just company management. And that’s part of the reason you see it with Verizon. The idea is that shareholders could recommend their own people for the board of directors. If you look around at a lot of the companies in this great country of ours,” Girard said, “many of the boards are just good old boys and they all think somewhat alike. So for shareholders to recommend people of a different background for a board is a very good thing.”